Gerhard Richter: For me it is absolutely necessary that the Baader-Meinhof is a subject for art: Gregorio Magnani

The latest cycle of Paintings by Gerhard Richter presents a series of images derived from photos of the last days of the Baader-Meinhof, the most important terrorist group in post-war German history. The group, which came out of Berlin in the late 60s, practiced violent urban guerrilla warfare with actions such as the bombing of a department store in Frankfurt and the kidnapping and murder of the German Arbeitgeberpresident, in order to undermine the apparent security and well-being of German capitalism. Their activities, which initially received the support of a majority of the German intelligentsia, ended with the capture and imprisonment of the group leaders. According to the official version, which still presents many unanswered questions, three of them, Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, committed suicide during the same night in their separate cells of the high security jail built especially to house them. “18 Oktober 1977,” the title of Richter’s current series, refers to the day of their communal funeral. The fifteen paintings, presented for the first time to the public last February at Haus Esters in Krefeld, have already generated much discussion in Germany, both for their content and for its relation to Richter’s declared political conservatism and distrust in all forms of ideology. What follows is the first interview Richter has agreed to give to the specialized art press.

Gregorio Magnani: Why did you decide to paint the Baader-Meinhof?

Gerhard Richter: There was no special event that made me decide. I had collected some photos and the idea was in the back of my mind for a long time. It was growing and growing, so finally I said, “I must paint this.” I come from East Germany and am not a Marxist, so of course at the time I had no sympathy for the ideas, or for the ideology that these people represented. I couldn't understand, but I was still impressed. Like everyone, I was touched. It was an exceptional moment for Germany.

GM: The title of the series “18 Oktober 1977” points, among other things, to what is perhaps the most incongruous aspect of the whole Baader-Meinhof story, the three simultaneous suicides in the separate cells of a high security jail. This is perhaps the closest you allow yourself to comment on the narrative you present. You insist on the importance of not considering it a closed case. Why?

GR: I tried to open it up again—to make a funeral again—but without a solution. The whole case, the entire complex of events was not dispatched. Sometimes I have the feeling that we forgot, or that we are forgetting—throwing the entire thing away from us like garbage. Of course I can’t provide an ending. I can't say, “This is how it happened,” which is not my intention. Maybe it was just for myself, I tried to dispatch that complex. Working is very good for that, you come up with a sort of solution, you move things around again and again until at last they have a new order, and then you can hide them again.

GM: Was your interest specific to the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, as a fact in German history, or mainly in its symbolic, exemplary value?

GR: Both. Also the symbolic event, to try to change history and fail. Baader-Meinhof was a very strong example of failure.

GM: It was one of the last direct revolutionary attempts.

GR: For me, ideology, extreme ideological faith, is an interesting problem. I think that we shouldn’t have ideas, or utopias, or ideologies. We don’t need belief. Religion, Khomeini, Catholicism, Marxism: every belief is dangerous and wrong. It must be wrong. We can’t believe we are thinking the right thing, we must be pragmatic. We no longer need belief. Perhaps it was necessary in the past, but today we have other possibilities, or at least we should create other possibilities. To go back again is a real disaster. When you see the current wars, these people, I mean the people who actually die, are fighting for nothing: for ideas, for nothing.

GM: Or often the ideas are excuses...

GR: For a natural aggressivity. Yes, this is part of us, we like to kill.

GM: You have said many times that “utopia is meaningless if not criminal,” yet you have chosen to paint an extreme utopia.

GR: This is the dilemma. I know it is part of us to build a world of ideas. I grew up with Nazi ideology and then, overnight, we had Marxism. For years Marxism told us that the capitalist system was about to collapse, and this never happened. It may happen someday, but we have to admit that we just don’t know, that economy is too complex to be explained by theory. Still, when I had to read Marxist political and economic theory, I could really see their power. They were not simple, but they made everything so clear, you could actually see the future as a logical development of the present.

GM: In your paintings there is pity for the Baader-Meinhof.

GR: There is sorrow, but I hope one can see that it is sorrow for the people who died so young and so crazy, for nothing. I have respect for them, but also for their wishes, or for the power of their wishes. Because they tried to change the stupid things in the world.

GM: Do you think Baader-Meinhof actually changed something in Germany? At least they may have undermined the respect for political and economic authority.

GR: I don’t know. On the other hand, authority is even more respected now. When the Baader-Meinhof appeared in the 70s, authority was weak in Germany, like everywhere. Now we are more pragmatic, we may not like the government, but we see its necessity. We are at the opposite end of terrorism, we want this order so that we can be a bit anarchist in our own homes. I think that this trauma changed our minds a bit, but I don’t think you can explain the effects as something specific.

GM: You've never dealt with such strong content before...

GR: I was always afraid of this kind of subject. It’s too spectacular; there is too much spectacle invested.

GM: It’s unsettling that you don’t offer a stylistic change to parallel your change in content. You seem to suggest that everything can be painted in the same way.

GR: I stepped back to twenty years ago, to the black and white portraits. I had hoped that I could paint these subjects in a different way, but it didn’t work. I tried, but it wasn’t possible; so I had to return to the former style. But it’s not true that everything can be painted, I have hundreds of photos of the Baader-Meinhof, but I can’t make another painting of this. I have used everything I could from those images. Yet still, for me, this technique was the only way to paint. If I want to paint something, I can only paint it like this. So the decision had to be made to not do something, or to do it in the old way. And in this case, I thought it was important to do these paintings.

GM: In the ‘60s you did some paintings which were derived from images of concentration camps, which you then destroyed. That was your only other attempt to deal with a tragedy which was both human and political. You said that this was a subject that couldn't be painted. What made you think the Baader-Meinhof could be painted?

GR: I still think it wouldn't be possible for me to make paintings of concentration camp scenes. I tried to do it when I was young and even then I gave up immediately. I just put the photos in the atlas where I collect all the subjects that have interested me. The concentration camps were simply terrible, without any hope, and that is something I can't paint. Baader-Meinhof is different: I tried to have some of their hope come out in the paintings.

GM: You also suggest a sort of morbid fascination with death, a form of sadistic voyeurism.

GR: There was no way to avoid that, even though I understood those deaths as exemplary. I hope it’s not the same as seeing an accident on the motorway and driving slowly because one is fascinated by it. I hope there’s a difference and that people get a sense that there is a purpose in looking at those deaths, because there is something about them that should be understood.

GM: There is a difference in your paintings, but you seem to suggest that there is no difference in the way people look at things, whatever the reason for looking.

GR: There are also reasons for fascination. Looking reminds us that we are the survivors, and at the same time, we see our own end, in front of us, and somehow we like seeing it.

GM: But fascination and complicity seem to create a problem for you, insofar as you want to make “moral” painting.

GR: Yes, this is a problem, it’s also a very old-fashioned one. The history of painting is full of images of suffering, but always as an example, our own fate.

GM: You may also be perceived as removing Baader-Meinhof from history and consigning it to the museum. Making terrorism into an acceptable artistic subject, you also consign it to a supreme voyeurism.

GR: I know this argument, but for me it is absolutely necessary that Baader-Meinhof is a subject for art. Art has to do with life. There must be no scene which is taboo to art, whatever risks this may entail.

GM: The difficulty would be that you don't claim an ideological or a political purpose in your work the same way that, say, Jacques- Louis David could.

GR: That would be almost the opposite of what I wanted to do... David painted a hero, I painted a victim. Not a victim of a particular ideology or power, just a human victim. And David also made art out of his subject, beautiful paintings with extraordinary compositions. Perhaps my work is more in-between, between documentation and art. I can’t imagine how any painter today could simply make art out of this subject. When my students at the academy heard I was doing these works, most of them said’ I wasn't allowed to paint this, that I was too bourgeois, too much a part of the establishment. This seemed very stupid to me. But many young artists are going to say this is bullshit, polit-kitsch, and maybe it is possible to see the works in that way.

GM: Except that the Baader-Meinhof was itself bourgeois, it came out of a bourgeois consciousness.

GR: True, but do you know of any revolutionary who wasn’t bourgeois? Maybe Spartacus was the last.

GM: Do you see this series as isolated, a unique parenthesis, or are you actually revising your relation to “content”?

GR: Yes, this does seem a bit outside of my work. But now when I see the gray monochrome paintings I realize that, perhaps, and surely not entirely consciously, that was the only way for me to paint concentration camps. It is impossible to paint the misery of life, except maybe in gray, to cover it.

GM: That seems much more like vour approach, while this series really diverges from the way you normally deal with things.

GR: But at the same time I always wanted to show directly what I thought, or what I felt. It would be hard to go further now. The landscape paintings now seem to be without “obligations.” Maybe they would like to have the same seriousness as the new works. but most people don’t see that, they just find them decorative.

GM: This series renders your other works, much more dramatic, especially those which have a relation to death, like the skulls, the apples...

GR: There is actual death now; the skulls were just quotations.

GM: You are claiming a different status for these paintings from that of normal artistic production, including your own. There was no museum opening for their presentation in Krefeld, the spotlights were off, the work isn't for sale, and you are allowing only certain paintings to be reproduced. You insist that this series must not be treated as consumer items. This strikes me as a utopic gesture.

GR: I was very afraid of the subject and that newspapers would make a big spectacle of the work. The relatives and friends of these people are still alive. I neither wanted to hurt them, nor did I want an opening with people standing around chatting and drinking wine. People visited my studio when I was working and wanted to buy a painting which they thought was saleable, like the record player. so I thought I had to do something. A gallery would just not have been the appropriate place for these images, but I realize this doesn't really change much.

GM: What destination do you envision for this cycle.

GR: A museum, even if they end up in storage most of the time.

GM: A German museum?

GR: Yes, I think it is better.

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